In the past year or so, I've noticed an interesting phenomenon taking place: The interests I had at a much younger age are coming back to me, sometimes after many years not being part of me.

I don't know if it's an effect of not having had kids of my own yet, or if it's just some cyclical mental thing that would have happened regardless. My early teens are coming back to me.

First I began wearing similar clothes to what I wore back then. Luckily, those clothes are appropriate on an adult. I feel VERY comfortable in those clothes, I realized.

Then it was movies. I was always a movie lover, and I loved Return of the Living Dead, Big Trouble in Little China, The ‘Burbs, and the Friday the 13th films. All of these films have returned to my interest lately, and I’ve watched them all regularly in the past couple of years. I noticed that a LOT of the movies that still matter to me are ones I watched right around that time.

Some of the music I loved has come back, too; I was a huge Alice Cooper fan back then, and bought the whole box set last year after having little interest for many many years. A lot of the other music I loved then still makes me deeply happy when I catch it on the radio or online.

Of course, comics are a part of my life, since joining Drunk Duck a few years ago. That hobby has been back with me for several years. But the comics and books I read back then are coming back to me. I've even hunted down some of those books and bought them again.

I wonder if it's just a quirk of the brain doing this, or just random recollections of old pleasures that I'm wanting to revisit.

But it is interesting how a lot of it is centered around what i loved at 14/15. For me, that was about the time that puberty hit me in full force.

I'd liked girls before that, but not with the consuming intensity that hit me at 15 (I think kids grow up earlier these days; for me that was the age). So maybe the stuff that filled my time and thoughts before puberty is what I'm returning to lately.

I was just reading the Martin Short memoir and at one point he theorizes that the interests we have up to age 15 or so are the interests we spend the rest of our lives processing and mixing together and playing with in our minds. I don't know if that's true, but it sure feels that way to me right now!

Does this ring true to anybody else? What did you love at 14? Have those interests left you? Stayed with you? Or are they due for a return visit?

Happy Thursday to ya!

Take care,

Banes, 14 (again)